Female inmates face a disproportionate chance of being victimized by sexual misconduct.

THE STAKES:

It's bad enough we lock up more people than any other country. Must we also tolerate their victimization?

Few evils exist in humanity like that of sexual assault. Surely in a class of its own would be sexual assault of female prisoners by the very people who are supposed to be guarding and rehabilitating them.

In a breathtaking report last Sunday, the Times Union's Alysia Santo presented an unwavering look at this stain on the state's prison system. While women account for just 5 percent of all inmates, they represent 30 percent of sexual misconduct cases and 61 percent of sexual harassment cases.

So alarming is New York's record that it came under national scrutiny in 2010 when a federal survey found the state to be among the nation's worst for staff-on-inmate abuse. Out of the 11 prisons with a "high incidence" of staff sexual misconduct, three were in New York.

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New York's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said through its spokesperson: "... Through prevention, education, and ongoing victim support programs, [the agency] works to eliminate all forms of sexual violence within the department ... and to prosecute anyone who sexually abuses an offender to the fullest extent of the law."

And in arguing that a federal class-action lawsuit should be dismissed, the state said the issue is moot, because the correction system is attempting to comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which aims to curb prison rape through information gathering and national standards. So far, the state has appointed a PREA coordinator, added 24 positions to ensure compliance and increased training for guards and inmates.

We are heartened by the corrections department's statement that it has a "zero tolerance policy," which means "even one instance of sexual abuse is one too many."

So why, then, isn't New York investigating the transition to an all-female correctional staff in women's prisons, as Michigan's Department of Corrections did in 2005 in response to its own raft of sexual abuse complaints? Male officers in New York also can be alone with women prisoners in areas outside video surveillance, including sleeping areas.

In fact, New York is one of the few states that allows male guards to conduct pat-down searches of clothed female inmates. Only women diagnosed by mental health staff as having post-traumatic stress disorder are exempt. Prison officials say such pat-downs are rare.

Even the Transportation Security Administration — hardly famed for respecting personal privacy — has tougher standards than that. The first bullet point on the TSA's "traveler information" page regarding pat-downs notes an officer of the same gender will conduct the check.

As Ms. Santo reported, "Both critics and impartial observers of the current system say restricting sensitive duties in women's prisons to female officers would reduce sexual assaults and counter false reporting."

The state must take a clear and proven step toward ending to this abhorrent blot on the corrections system. Implementing the Michigan solution is the surest way to stop both the suspicion and the awful reality of this crime.